Ali Rowghani

Ali Rowghani is CEO of Y Combinator Continuity, where he invests in and advises growth-stage startups. Ali directly contributed to the growth of two great companies -- at Twitter, as CFO then COO, and at Pixar as CFO and SVP of Strategic Planning.

We are delighted to invite interested founders to apply to the YC Growth Program. The Growth Program is designed for companies with between 50 – 150 employees that are scaling rapidly. The deadline for application is February 23, 2018.

Today, we are excited to announce the YC Growth Program, our first formal program for later stage startups. If we imagine Y Combinator as the university degree for startups, the Growth Program is grad school. The program is designed for founder-CEOs of post-Series A companies with between 50-100 employees who are in the early stages of company-building. The basis of the program is a 10-week dinner series, with each dinner focused on a specific issue that every startup has to overcome in order to scale successfully.

It’s tempting to measure leaders simply by the success of their businesses. But even the most successful founders know how much timing and luck can be confounding factors in this approach. Measuring leadership through bottom-line company performance also fails to provide any clues as to how someone can improve as a leader. So is there a better way?